The King’s Choice was released in Boston during October 2017 when a lot of seemingly solid movies premiered (Battle of the Sexes, Professor Marston and the Wonder Women, Marshall, Human Flow and Mark Felt: The Man Who Brought Down the White House), but none of these films succeeded in promoting itself to lead the pack. It was also an extremely trying month for me so I settled by only seeing two films in the theater that month, Blade Runner 2049 and Dolores, and added this film to my queue. When it became available on DVD, I failed to secure it at the earliest possible moment then it sat in my house for a month gathering dust. By that point, I realized that I was Netflix’s dream business model, and I needed to return it immediately by either admitting that I was never watching it or just watch it regardless of whether or not I felt like it. I choose the night that Presidon’t announced attacking Syria. Oy. Hilarious side note: it is available to stream for free if you have Amazon Prime so I could have continued procrastinating.
The King’s Choice was in theaters before Darkest Hour, but somehow still manages to stand in the latter movie’s shadow. This film also predates the events that occur in the British film and provide some helpful background on what it feels like to be a sovereign nation suddenly overrun by Russians….Nazis, I mean Nazis. Apologies, Americans’ educational system is under attack so it makes us falter on historical events and geography. Oops. I guess that is what happens when elections go sideways. If only we had more competent people at the helm….Blink.
The King’s Choice focuses on three historical figures’ reaction to the invasion: the king, German Envoy, i.e. ambassador, Curt Brauer and a young soldier, Menig Fredrik Seeberg. All are roused from every day complacency and routine and forced into uncharacteristic action. Each of them is fighting two battles. The king is externally fighting the Nazis and internally fighting to preserve the integrity of his government by staying in his lane, counseling his son and urging other leaders to stand with him in keeping their assigned roles. Brauer is internally fighting the Nazis’ military arm from completely brutalizing a country that he has made home and externally the Norwegians to accept reason to prevent further bloodshed. Seeberg is fighting the Nazis (with dubious results), and his identity as a child forced to become a man, but is completely unprepared for what that means in the real world. The film’s divided focus and constant shifting probably detracts from the movie, but it did not gain any favor from me in its sympathetic portrait of Brauer. A nice Nazi is still a Nazi, and the horrifying aspect of his personality is that his sense of reality is completely twisted within seconds of talking to Hitler. He submits. If the movie had predominantly focused on the king as Darkest Hour focused on Churchill, it would be a solid film because he is depicted as the most relatable character, and there is real tension regarding what will happen to him and his family even though we can easily find out what happened.
The King’s Choice starts with a background intertitle that explains how Prince Carl of Denmark became King Haakon VII of Norway. Norway was only a constitutional monarchy since June 19, 1905 when it dissolved its union with Sweden. The Cabinet and the Parliament is supposed to hold political power, and the elected king imported from Denmark was ceremonial. The film primarily focuses on April 8th through 11th, 1940 in Norway and provides a brief clip of May 8, 1945 to explain what happened to the royal family after WWII ended. The movie shows how the king suddenly was forced to take a more central role than originally planned at a point in his life when he was preparing to exit public and real life. Even though the film does a great job of informing viewers of the historical backdrop, I still found myself confused when the players actually interacted with each other. Other than the Royal family, I could not distinguish who was supposed to be playing which political role so hopefully the following summary of the political landscape will help you if you decide to give the movie a chance.
Norway wanted to remain neutral, but The King’s Choice suggests that this neutrality was because there was a political faction within the government secretly aligned with foreign interests, i.e. the Nazis. This neutral stance helped the Nazis because it led to inaction and a failure to mobilize a defense. Once the Nazis entered their harbor, the Norwegians had few choices because doing nothing is basically surrendering once the wolf is at the door. Run to buy yourself more time, surrender or fight. The people who were supposed to act were either paralyzed by indecision or wanted to abdicate responsibility altogether by resigning (think Brexit when suddenly all the people who wanted it no longer wanted the responsibility). The ones with no authority to act seized power either with noble results (the military instinctually fired on the Nazis even though they technically had no orders to do so) or plunged the country into further confusion by staging a coup and declaring themselves the government with the thin excuse that the official government technically wasn’t housed in its seat of power and tried to resign.
The important lessons of The King’s Choice are to never abdicate your national responsibilities out of fear or partisan self-interest otherwise you may find yourself at the mercy of foreign interests, and not all country folk are motivated by loyalty to the country. If you find yourself more aligned with foreign interests than the nation’s best interest, ultimately the people will reject you, and history will condemn you, or worse, strike your name from the record. The collaborator is never depicted in the film, only heard. The King’s Choice does excel at depicting the Nazis’ doublespeak. For example, they characterize themselves as heroic defenders of Norway, not invaders, then take offense when they are not thanked for their troubles. They use words to create the reality that they want, a lethal game of make believe, then try to force it into existence in the real world: a world where the king bows to them while they ignore the actual Cabinet and Parliament. The whole movie is a weird circle of unrequited political love. The Cabinet and Parliament would be happy to negotiate, but the Nazis aren’t interested in them. The pro-Nazi Norwegian who seizes power would be happy to take the place of the Cabinet and Parliament, and the Nazis would love to negotiate with him, but the people did not elect him. The king is the only person that everyone can agree on.
Even though The King’s Choice is a solid film that I would recommend to viewers interested in WWII, it loses momentum in translation and is not required viewing. The words on the screen were incredibly difficult to read because either they were too small or the font color blended into the scene. Some sentences did not make sense. My lack of familiarity with the Norwegian government and the story made it difficult to follow parts of the story. There was a lot of rewinding which made a long movie even longer. A more ruthless editor would have cut out Seeberg altogether although he plays a necessary role to show viewers what Nazi rule actually looks like to ordinary Norwegians. Predominantly focusing on the royal family’s story would have made a more engaging film.